Every business has a multitude of records to maintain, from contracts, invoices, and accounting documents to HR files. Many of these records are legally required to be stored for 5 to 10 years to support periodic inspections, audits, or compliance checks.
Storing paper records takes up space, incurs costs, and makes retrieval difficult when needed. Documents are also prone to damage, loss, or data breaches if not managed carefully. That’s why many businesses have switched to record digitization for smarter, more cost-effective, and secure management.
So, what exactly is record digitization, what benefits does it bring, and how do you get started? DIGI-TEXX will help clarify these points in the article below.
What is record digitization?
Record digitization is the process of converting various types of paper documents and records into digital data, making storage and management more convenient and efficient. Once digitized, records can be easily accessed, shared, and utilized through digital platforms such as Document Management Systems (DMS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, or securely stored on cloud platforms or a company’s internal servers.
Unlike simply scanning documents, record digitization is a comprehensive process involving multiple specialized steps to optimize the storage, searchability, and usability of document collections. Specifically, record digitization includes:
- Document classification: Records are organized into clear categories such as contracts, invoices, HR files, technical documents, legal papers, etc., to facilitate accurate management and retrieval.
- Indexing: Each digitized document is assigned identifying information (such as record codes, client names, dates, document types, etc.). This enables systems to quickly search and filter documents within seconds, rather than manually searching as before.
- Integration of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology: OCR helps “read” and convert text within images into searchable text.
- Document lifecycle management: Digitized records are tagged with retention periods and alerts for destruction or retention according to legal regulations. This ensures compliance with storage laws and prevents unnecessary or missed storage of important documents.
Which types of records need digitization?
To implement record digitization effectively, businesses need to identify priority groups of records to digitize first. Below is a classification table of common types of records that require digitization:
| Record Group | Common Document Types | Reasons for Digitization |
| Administration – HR | Employment contracts, internal forms, appointment decisions, and candidate records | Centralized management, information security, support for audits, and internal evaluations |
| Finance – Accounting | Invoices, accounting books, payrolls, financial reports, receipts, and payment vouchers | Quick retrieval, support for tax finalization, and reducing the risk of losing original documents |
| Legal – Contracts | Business contracts, operation licenses, intellectual property registrations, and agreements | Ensure legal compliance, enable fast reference during disputes or inspections |
| Technical – Production | Technical drawings, production procedures, machine operation manuals, and maintenance records | Improve technical efficiency, facilitate sharing, and standardize technical information storage |
| Customers – Partners | Customer records, service contracts, handover reports, and quotations | Optimize customer care processes, support quick lookup of transaction history |
| Specialized Fields | Medical records (healthcare), transcripts and certificates (education), maps and acceptance reports (construction), research documents (R&D) | Meet long-term storage, security, and compliance requirements specific to each industry |
Benefits of Record Digitization for Businesses
1. Cost and Storage Space Savings
Paper documents usually occupy significant office space and require special preservation measures to avoid deterioration over time. Record digitization helps businesses significantly reduce costs related to printing, equipment maintenance, and physical storage space:
- Reduce printing and supplies costs: When documents are converted into digital formats, printing demands drop sharply, saving expenses on paper, ink, and printer maintenance.
- Free up storage space: Instead of dedicating large areas to storing paper documents, digital records are stored on servers or cloud platforms, enabling more efficient use of office space.
- Easy management and sharing: Electronic records can be copied and transmitted effortlessly without additional resource costs, unlike paper documents that require reprinting for sharing.
2. Faster and More Accurate Document Retrieval
Traditional paper document searches are time-consuming and prone to errors or loss. Record digitization combined with OCR technology accelerates and improves accuracy in retrieving records:
- Keyword and content search: Digital document management systems allow users to search by keywords, file names, or even document content within seconds.
- Reduce risk of document loss: Documents stored centrally on a single platform minimize errors and confusion caused by manual handling.
- Save time: Staff spend less time searching for records and can focus on core tasks, boosting overall efficiency.
3. Enhanced Operational Efficiency and Decision-Making
Record digitization helps businesses synchronize information across departments, improving accuracy and flexibility in data handling.
- Information synchronization: Departments can access the most up-to-date data anytime, anywhere, avoiding inconsistencies.
- Information synchronization: Departments can access the most up-to-date data anytime, anywhere, avoiding inconsistencies.
- Support decision-making: Leaders can make quicker decisions based on accurate, comprehensive data, reducing business risks.
4. Stronger Security and Access Control
Paper records are susceptible to loss or unauthorized access, while digital records benefit from tighter security and better management:
- Access rights management: Businesses can restrict viewing, editing, or sharing rights based on employee roles.
- Audit trail: All actions on documents are logged for inspection and monitoring when needed.
- Data protection: Security measures such as encryption and regular backups help safeguard documents from loss or cyberattacks.
5. Easy Compliance with Legal Storage Requirements
Many current regulations require businesses to store records properly, ensuring transparency and retrievability when necessary. Record digitization helps businesses comply with these demands more easily:
- Quick retrieval for inspections and audits: Digital records enable searching and extraction within seconds, allowing fast and accurate responses to authorities, reducing errors compared to paper documents.
- Preserve legal validity: Digital documents can include elements like digital signatures, timestamps, and access history to ensure transparency and protect original content from tampering, meeting legal integrity and authenticity standards.
- Long-term storage per government standards: Some documents must be stored form 5 up to 20 years by law. Compared to easily deteriorated paper records, digital files can be backed up, encrypted, and securely stored on digital platforms, ensuring durability and long-term accessibility.
6. Foundation for Digital Transformation and Automation
Record digitization is a crucial first step for businesses to adopt technology, automate processes, and optimize operations:
- Easy system integration: Once records are digitized, businesses can link this information with ERP, CRM, or DMS software, synchronizing data and workflows to improve management efficiency.
- Support automation: Processing steps such as approval and archiving can be fully automated, reducing manual workload for employees, thereby increasing productivity and shortening processing time.
- Increased flexibility: Digitization allows businesses to easily expand and adjust operational processes, quickly adapting to market demands and new technological developments.
Record Digitization Process
1. Define the Scope of Record Digitization
Before starting the digitization process, the business needs to clearly understand the current status of existing paper records. This helps in effective planning and implementation to avoid loss and omissions.
Storage location
Identify exactly where the records are stored, for example, in office filing cabinets, separate warehouses, or scattered across multiple branches. Knowing the exact location helps gather all records in one complete set and implement digitization in specific areas.
Volume of records
Estimate the quantity of records to calculate the time, manpower, and cost required. A standard file box or one linear meter (approximately one filing cabinet drawer) usually contains about 1,800 pages.
Usage frequency
Consider how often each record is used to determine which should be digitized first. Frequently used records should be prioritized for digitization to support daily operations.
Record condition assessment
Check the physical condition of each record set before digitizing. Records that are torn, faded, damp, or discolored should be separated for pre-processing (e.g., cleaning, flattening) to ensure clear and durable scanned images.
Compliance and security requirements
Certain industries, such as finance, healthcare, or insurance, have specific requirements for record storage. Digitized records must be preserved according to regulations if they are used as legal evidence or for audits.
2. Organize and Prepare Record for Digitization
Before feeding records into the digitization process, the business needs to carefully sort and prepare the paper records. This not only speeds up scanning but also ensures high-quality digitized data.
Remove physical obstructions
Paper records often have staples, paper clips, plastic covers, or sticky notes. These should be completely removed to prevent scanner jams and allow smooth, aligned scanning without tearing.
Flatten and clean documents
Creased, curled, or wrinkled pages should be flattened before scanning. Dust, ink smudges, or dirty covers should be lightly cleaned to ensure clear, sharp images.
Eliminate unnecessary records
Not all papers in a file need digitizing. Review and remove duplicates, expired records, or those no longer valuable to focus resources on important materials.
Sort records into groups
Organize records by department, function (e.g., HR, accounting, legal), date, or reference number. This arrangement facilitates easy, logical, and consistent retrieval and management post-digitization.
Verify record counts
After grouping, double-check the number of pages in each file to ensure nothing is missing. This maintains information completeness and prevents rework later.
Create a checklist
Before proceeding, prepare a checklist to review all prepared records. Mark damaged, faded, or hard-to-read files for special handling to maintain digitization quality.
3. Scan Documents
Once records are sorted, checked, and ready, use specialized scanners to convert paper into digital files.
Select suitable equipment
Depending on document type (A4, large format, thin paper, photos), use scanners with appropriate resolution and speed. Special documents may require dedicated scanning devices.
Set proper scanning parameters
Configure settings such as resolution (commonly 300 dpi), color mode (black & white, grayscale, or color), and file format (PDF, TIFF, JPEG) to suit storage and usage needs.
Maintain page order and completeness
Ensure pages remain in the correct sequence without missing or duplicated pages. Assign staff to review scanned batches promptly to fix any errors.
Handle special documents
Torn, faded, or highly confidential files should be scanned separately with appropriate methods, such as enhanced resolution, multiple scans, or image processing software.
4. Convert Scanned Images into Digital Text Using OCR Technology
After scanning, use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to convert images into searchable, editable text. This step is crucial to make digitized data accessible and usable.
Transform images into text
OCR automatically reads characters from images and converts them into digital text, eliminating the barrier of non-searchable scanned images.
Preserve original document layout
Advanced OCR systems recognize and retain formatting such as tables, paragraphs, and headings, making the digital record easy to read and consistent with the original.
Verify accuracy
Once OCR is complete, it is important to review the document to ensure that there are no errors in the recognition process – especially if the document is blurred, misaligned, or contains handwriting. This review helps ensure the quality of the document and avoids errors when used later.
5. Store and Manage Digitized Records
Once the record have been digitized and fully identified, the next step is to put them into a storage and management system. This is an important stage to ensure that the data is always available for access, use and protection according to standards.
Digital records will be stored on an electronic document management system (DMS) or cloud computing platform, where files are organized in a logical structure such as classified by department, file type, storage time… This process helps businesses easily search, share and control information when needed.
Key considerations for digital storage include:
- Metadata: Attach information such as record name, creation date, author, and file type to support quick retrieval.
- Access control: Set permission levels based on user roles to secure sensitive data and restrict editing or sharing.
- Retention compliance: Define appropriate retention periods following legal or internal policies, with automated alerts or actions for document expiration.
- Backup and security: Storage systems should be backed up regularly and incorporate security measures such as encryption, access control, and data leakage protection to protect the integrity of digital records.
Proper management after digitization optimizes operational efficiency while ensuring compliance and long-term data security.
6. Plan for Creating and Storing Electronic Records Going Forward
After completing digitization, businesses should transition fully to electronic record creation and storage. New records should be drafted, approved, and stored digitally instead of producing paper copies.
This approach maintains consistency in document management, minimizes additional paper records, and prevents repetitive digitization efforts in the future. It also lays the groundwork for better data integration, sharing, and utilization.
Key Factors in the Record Digitization Process
1. Develop a focused record digitization roadmap, avoiding dispersion
Businesses need to clearly define the scope and objectives of record digitization from the outset to avoid scattered efforts or inconsistencies. Priority should be given to groups of records that are frequently used or subject to strict legal and audit requirements. Breaking the process into smaller phases will help better control progress and reduce risks during implementation.
2. Standardize record classification and naming methods
A clear and consistent naming and classification system helps manage and locate records quickly and accurately. Businesses should develop a unified standard for the entire organization, such as record name, issue date, and department code. This is especially important when digitized records are shared across multiple departments or integrated with software systems.
3. Add metadata to enhance data exploitation and management
Metadata (descriptive data) such as record type, creator, effective date, retention period, etc., helps manage records systematically. This is essential to support advanced searching and access control. Without metadata, digitized records are difficult to effectively utilize despite being in electronic form.
4. Control output quality after OCR recognition
After performing OCR, businesses need to review the results to ensure the accuracy of digitized content. Especially for records with low scan quality, blurred images, or special characters, recognition errors are common. This quality check step helps prevent data errors, particularly for records related to legal or critical business matters.
5. Ensure data security and control access rights
Digitized records must be stored on secure systems with access rights assigned according to users’ roles and functions. At the same time, a mechanism to log access history and edits should be established to facilitate audits and verifications when needed. This is a crucial requirement to ensure compliance with information security regulations within the organization.
Effective Record Management to Accelerate Digital Transformation for Businesses
As outlined in this article, record digitization not only helps reduce costs and save storage space but also serves as a crucial foundation for digital transformation.
When executed through a well-structured process from classification, scanning, OCR, to storage and management, businesses can better control their information, improve operational efficiency, and easily retrieve data when needed.
To achieve optimal results, it is essential to establish appropriate procedures, select reliable technologies, and ensure strong access control and security standards.
We hope this article provides you with a clear and practical perspective to begin your record digitization journey. Should your business need more information or wish to discuss further, the DIGI-TEXX team is always ready to support you step by step in building an effective and modern document management system.
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